Here鈥檚 a safe bet. While Las Vegas is typically synonymous with splurging, one hotel on the Strip isn鈥檛 having any of that. Last year,聽Aria Resort and Casino聽had 7 million pounds of leftover food and it made sure that none of it hit the landfill, CBS reported. Instead, the resort figured out how to ace the food waste process.
Aria sent its leftovers to a hog farm to be turned into pig slop. The move kept those leftovers from聽decomposing into methane, which has a warming potential 21 times that of carbon dioxide.聽Donating scraps to pig farms is actually one of the most effective ways to salvage leftovers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many local pig farmers are willing to turn leftovers into food for their animals, though they鈥檙e primarily interested in single-stream fruits and vegetables or grain waste, according to the EPA.
However, Aria was still able to send over its extraneous sushi, roast beef and other fare. The move comes at a time when food waste rates have hit astronomical heights in the U.S., yet restaurants still remain reluctant to give away their extra food.
In the U.S.,聽40 percent of all food聽produced is wasted. And while restaurants are in an auspicious position to donate, many don鈥檛. More than half of them say they won鈥檛 donate due to聽fears of liability issues,聽even though they鈥檙e protected from such backlash.
While figuring out how to repurpose leftovers is key, it often requires some perfecting, as was the case with one of celebrity chef Mario Batali鈥檚 restaurants. When the steaks from Las Vegas restaurant Carnevino came out of the aging room, they emerged with a layer of 鈥済arbage鈥� on the outside, which didn鈥檛 look appetizing, but was completely edible, Elizabeth Meltz, director of environmental health, told The Huffington Post.
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